Save some user demographic info with the request for reporting/statistics.
Store demographics (ie, non personally identifying information, such as major or department) associated with a user request, to the request, not just the user.
This would allow us to know better understand ‘how many requests were submitted by BIOLOGY majors’ in a given period of time vs. having those BIOLOGY requests migrate to a new major when USERS change major or vice versa.
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Merrie Fuller commented
We have a different use-case for this, which for us could be solved by greater customized layout options in both the request and in the queue-table view. Here's the use-case: some departments at the university have their own ILL but not their own document delivery, and we can fulfill requests from the local items, but must refer ILLs back to them. It's impossible to tell at a glance right now what sort of patron these are, and the departmental names are so finicky/changeable/abbreviated that we can't use routing rules or anything simple--it requires human eyes. We've had no luck amending the policy to something rational, and without a technical fix, we're really flailing on this one.